Thursday, 14 November 2013

It’s that time of year again for the BBC’s Children in Need.

Since 1980 it has raised over £600 million to change the lives of disabled children and young people in the UK. One of the highlights is an annual telethon, held in November and televised on BBC One and BBC One HD from 7:30pm until 2am. "Pudsey Bear" is BBC Children in Need's mascot, whilst Terry Wogan is a long-standing host. BBC Children in Need is one of three high-profile British telethons, although the only charity belonging to the BBC, the other telethons being Red Nose Day and Sport Relief, both supporting the Comic Relief charity. The 2013 appeal will take place on Friday 15 November.

Unlike the other BBC charity telethon Comic Relief, Children in Need relies a lot on the BBC regions for input into the telethon night. The BBC English regions all have around 5–8 minute round-ups every hour during the telethon. This does not interrupt the schedule of items shown from BBC Television Centre as the host Terry Wogan usually hands over to the regions, giving those in the main network studio a short break. However BBC Scotland, BBC Wales and BBC Northern Ireland do opt out of the network schedule with a lot of local fundraising news and activities from their broadcast area. Usually they will go over to the network broadcast at various times of the night, and usually they will show some network items later than when the English regions will see them. This is to give the BBC nations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland a much larger slot than the BBC English regions because the "nations" comprise a distinct audience of the BBC. Usually BBC Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland hand back to network coverage from around 1:00 am in the telethon night. For the 2010 appeal this changed, with Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales deciding not to have their usual opt-outs and instead following the English regions' pattern of having updates every hour.